The Alarm: Forwards – Album Review

The Alarm: Forwards

(The Twenty First Century Recording Company)

All Formats Available

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The Alarm’s 21st studio album, Forwards, is out now on their own The Twenty First Century Recording Company label.

The Welsh punk survivors have released Forwards, which follows last year’s Omega, which had been written and recorded over 50 days in early 2021 during the pandemic. With a dark irony, Omega could well have been their last following sole original member Mike Peters’ well-publicised battle with pneumonia and a serious leukaemia relapse during 2022; a condition which has first been diagnosed in 1995.

Thankfully that wasn’t to be the case, and we now have the optimistic, life-affirming Forwards, written while the artist was receiving treatment at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd Hospital in Rhyl. “I literally took my guitar into hospital with me,” says Peters. “I was on the ward for such a long time, I started writing the songs for Forwards in between IV sessions and the first people to hear the music were, literally, the very people who were trying to keep me alive.” The album was recorded in between hospitalisation periods, the singer taking the band into the recording studio with producer George Williams, despite barely being able to speak due to the debilitating effects of chronic illness. He says, “I’ve been to places only deep suffering can take the human spirit and, in the darkness, I clung onto every piece of light I could find to work my way back to life. This was the energy that drove me to write and record Forwards.”

Before we go forwards (sorry, bad pun) let’s take stock. The Alarm, since the early 1980s had 17 Top 50 UK singles, including the magnificent 68 Guns; Spirit of 76 and Rain In The Summertime and have sold over six million albums worldwide. The band split in 1991, however Peters performed as a solo artist, with projects such as Coloursound with Billy Duffy and returned to the ‘Alarm’ name in the early 2000s. I’ll be honest I’m not qualified to summarise the artists lengthy career, but what I will say is the bands website is one of the best I’ve ever seen with clearly a lot of time and attention paid to it, with interviews and documents dating back to early days as The Toilets and also Seventeen.

 (Apologies, I’ll get onto the album shortly!) The other thing that jumps out from the site is what a bloody great bloke Mike Peters is. Whilst he’s been knocked down on occasions, he’s got up again. As well as a savvy operator, arguably one of the first artists to set up his own label to release his music and control his catalogue, he’s also constantly in touch with his fans. Since the lockdowns, his Big Night In online broadcasts (via YouTube) have attracted thousands of views from all corners of the Earth. The love for the artist and his music has also been celebrated at ‘The Gathering’ each year. This year it celebrates its 30th anniversary attracting fans to North Wales, and next week Peters is flying out to New York to perform, chat, and meet and greet for 4 sold-out days, from June 22nd to 25th. As well as being a bloody great bloke he seems to be a very humble one too. How many readers are aware of the amazing charity work (with wife Jules) via their Love Hope Strength Foundation which promotes innovative, music-related, outreach and awareness programmes for leukaemia and cancer sufferers, survivors and their families?

Truth be told I am lapsed Alarm fan myself, my last real memory of the band was the ‘Poppy Fields hoax’ of 2004 which lead to the film Vinyl, although I was aware they were responsible for the Official Welsh World Cup single, The Red Wall of Cymru. While my musical tastes and allegiances may have changed over the decades I still remember the thrill of hearing the aforementioned 68 Guns in my (early-ish) teens. In true 1980’s fashion, I recorded it from the Top 40 on Radio 1. I also remember picking up a copy of Spirit Of 76 from the ‘ex jukebox’ section of Grants Newsagents in Heald Green after being paid for my paper round. The albums Eye Of The Hurricane and Electric Folklore Live later soundtracked my bus journeys to and from my YTS after leaving school. The dynamics of the tracks always grab the attention as Mike Peters soulful yet occasionally coarse vocals carry you along.

So what about the new album? How would this compare? Forwards hits you with an urgency and pent-up restless energy from the off. The opening title track sets the tone for the album, which offers reflections balanced with a desire to live throughout. The first track fades in as if you’re returning from the darkness into the light of hope. Peters explains the track was, “Written for, and in the moment that I found myself trying to stay alive. I was in hospital and searching my heart and soul for clues to how I could survive. My instincts told me that whenever I had a moment in between IV sessions I should not stay still and at least try and walk some steps along the corridors of the hospital. This was generally at night when the place was deserted and the lyrics are informed by all the fleeting glimpses I would get from seeing other people on my route down the long corridors sometimes stricken with grief or like myself, clinging to life itself. I was looking for the way forwards and when I decided to go public and post the news about what was happening to me on the Alarm website, I signed my message off with the single word ‘Forwards’. I knew right away that was going to be a song and an album title”. It’s a call to arms and a hook which will pull you in.

Forwards is naturally dominated by the artist’s experiences over the last year, with key themes of love, hope and strength throughout. After a few listens some of those stand out, such as the opening line of The Returning, a track written for Jules and his sons Dylan and Evan, “Dream out loud if you want to stay alive,” or the defiant “Whatever’s trying to kill me…. makes me feel alive” in previous single and Next which closes side one of the album.

Another Way gives you an insight into the working of the writer’s mind, and also his resolve. “There’s always another way; is a mantra and a phrase that has proved itself to me time and time again. Even in the most simple phases of life when a door seems closed, or life impacts on your direction of travel, I’m a believer that there is always a solution,” which seems to pay off on the following track, Love And Forgiveness, the singer commenting, “I’m always amazed when I find myself on the other side of life’s challenges, grateful to be alive and to have received the love and forgiveness to continue…” This is possibly my favourite track on the album, it’s a mid-tempo piece, almost Dylan-esque.

The opening track on the second, Whatever, was born out of John Lennon’s Whatever Gets You Thru The Night being played on hospital radio one day, Peters took his idea of getting through one night, and applied it to a longer intent Whatever Gets You Through Life? He remembers, “When I was in Ward 11 with a drain attached (through my back), into my lung, I had to lie still and on one side for 7 days while 5 litres of blood was extracted from my partially collapsed lungs. To stay sane I started to imagine what a new Alarm record would sound like and what kind of songs I would need to populate the space between the record cover and also get me through this predicament. As soon as I was out of hospital, I set up my recording gear and the songs burst forth from my imagination. It was as if they were writing themselves, and I knew the music had got me through and back to a place where I could begin to live again”.

Transition is perhaps the most open, raw and brutal song on the album, written at a point, “literally in a place of transition between life and death.” The opening verse makes it clear. ‘There’s a line / I have to cross tonight / If I want to stay alive / Live for a second time’. Midway through it musically lightens and you get a sense of hope on the horizon, especially when the guitar riff kicks in which at one point sounds not unlike I Will Follow.

Love Disappearing is the oldest piece on the album, written before hospitalisation but recorded after. It’s got a bit of everything. The open section making having a Spanish feel to it before turning into a tub-thumper, “Its content is easily explained, especially as the concerns about global warming are all around us and everywhere. Here in my small Welsh village, it seems as if life has taken a turn and the summers are not how I remember them as a child growing up, with winter becoming more severe with every passing year.”

The penultimate, New Standards is looking to the future, a song ‘about changing attitudes to life, the impact of social media and the dynamic between society and authority’. After charting the trauma of his time in hospital it’s positive that Peters can focus on what happens next. He says of the track, “Humanity is setting new standards every day, and I hope we can all learn to live with and by them, together”. Closing with the track X, it’s up to the listener to make of it what you will. “I wrote the lyrics in one pass and it was all there. I had no title but called it X as it was the last song on a ten-track record”.

Many may come to Forwards as a result of Mike Peter’s recent battles, it is a great place to return to The Alarm. I’m sure seasoned followers will question where I/we have been, and it’s a fair question, it’s us that have been away, not the band. There’s plenty to catch up on, over 400 songs, and I intend to start now. It seems that that opening line written 40 years ago was prophetic… “and now they’re trying to take my life away…”. ‘They’ did, and are still trying, but thankfully Mike Peters is a survivor and still here to tell the tale.

I’ll leave the last word to Mike… “A lot of artists have to kill to make a record like Forwards and with the challenges that came my way in 2022, I certainly had to kill or be killed, to realise the ambition in these songs. It was literally life or death making this record. I’ve already taken so much from life, that when I was in hospital stricken with chronic illness, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be spared another opportunity to live. Fortunately for me, I was granted more time on earth and the challenge remains as ever, to make the most of every single second.”

The Alarm play with The Mission and The Cult at Cardiff Castle on 4th July. 

Tickets are available here

Find The Alarm at their website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

All words by Iain Key. See his author profile here or find him on Twitter as @iainkey